About this Medicine article

Telomere length and frailty in older adults—A systematic review and meta-analysis by Aline Carla Araújo Carvalho; Mário Luis Tavares Mendes; Monique Carla da Silva Reis; Victor Santana Santos; Diego Moura Tanajura; Paulo Ricardo Saquete Martins-Filho is a Medicine article available to read on EtoBox.

Telomere shortening has been proposed as a potentially useful biomarker of human ageing and age-related morbidity and mortality. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to summarize results from individual studies on the telomere length according to the frailty status and frailty index in older adults. We searched the PubMed, SCOPUS and Web of Science databases to identify studies that evaluated the telomere length in frail and non-frail older adults and the relationship between telomere length and frailty index score. We used the base pairs (bp) as a measure of the telomere length. Summary estimates were calculated using random-effects models. Nine studies were included in the present systematic review and a total of 10,079 older adults were analyzed. We found that the frail older adults (n = 355) had shorter telomeres than the non-frail (n = 1894) (Standardized Mean Difference [SMD] -0.41; 95% CI -0.73 to -0.09; P = 0.01; I2 = 82%). Significant differences in telomere length between frail and non-frail older adults were identified in Hispanic (SMD -1.31; 95% CI -1.71 to -0.92; P < 0.0001; I2 = 0%) but not in Non-Hispanic countries (SMD -0.13; 95% CI -0.26 to 0.00; P =

Author

Aline Carla Araújo Carvalho; Mário Luis Tavares Mendes; Monique Carla da Silva Reis; Victor Santana Santos; Diego Moura Tanajura; Paulo Ricardo Saquete Martins-Filho

Publisher

Elsevier Science; Elsevier ; Elsevier BV (ISSN 1872-9649)

Published

2019

Language

EN

Field

Medicine (Health Sciences)